İşleyen Belleğin Okuma Anlama Sürecindeki Rolü ve İşlevi

Year 2009, Issue: 22, 467 - 476, 01.08.2009

Salih Özenici

Abstract

Bu makalenin amacı, işleyen belleğin okuma anlamadaki işlevini ve rolünü ortaya koymaktır. Eğitimde bilişsel öğrenme kuramlarının etkin kullanımı, son yıllarda düzenli olarak artmaktadır. Bilişsel öğrenme araştırmalarıöncelikle, anlamlısözel öğrenmede içsel bilişsel süreçleri anlamaya ve tanımlamaya çalışmaktadır. İnsan zihni bilgiyi alır, işler, biçim ve içeriğini değiştirir, depolar, gerektiği zaman geri getirir ve tepkiler üretir. Duyusal kayıttan dikkat ve algısüreçleri sonunda ayrılan bilgi, sistemin ikinci öğesi olan kısa süreli veya işleyen belleğe geçer. İşleyen belleğin hem bilgi tutma süresi, hem de kapasitesi sınırlıdır. Kısa süreli belleğin kısa bir süre içinde bilgiyi depolamak ve zihinsel işlemleri yapmak olmak üzere iki önemli işlevi vardır. Bilgiyi işleme kuramıve bilişsel psikolojinin ortaya çıkıp gelişimiyle birlikte, okuma anlamaya yönelik bakışaçılarıda değişmiştir. Okuma anlama sürecinde dilbilimsel beceriler ve zihinsel süreçler arasında karşılıklıbir etkileşim vardır. Bu karşılıklıetkileşim sonucunda metnin anlamıortaya çıkar. Okuma anlama sürecindeki bireysel farklılıklar ve başarısızlıklar sadece dilbilimsel becerilerle açıklanamaz, bu süreçte önemli bir rol oynayan zihinsel süreçler de bu farklılıklara ve başarısızlıklara neden olabilir. Okuma anlamayla ilgili yeni bakışaçılarına göre, okuma bilişsel düzeyde meydana gelen ve değişik becerileri ve süreçleri içeren karmaşık ve bir bu kadar da zor bir etkinliktir. Okuma anlama sürecinde, metindeki kelimelerin işlenip çözümlenmesi ve metinden gelen bilginin, bireyin daha önceden edinip uzun süreli belleğinde depolamışolduğu art alan bilgisiyle uyumlu hale getirilmesi ve ortaya çıkacak uyumsuzlukların giderilmesi gibi süreçler işleyen bellek içerisinde meydana gelmektedir. İşleyen bellek kapasitesindeki yetersizlikler ve işlevindeki eksiklikler okuma anlamayıolumsuz düzeyde etkileyecektir.

Keywords

Okuma Anlama, İşleyen Bellek, Zihinsel Süreçler, Bilişsel Psikoloji, Depolama ve İşleme

The Role and Function of Working Memory in Reading Comprehension Process

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present working memory’s function and role in reading comprehension. The effective use of cognitive learning models in education has increased regularly in recent years. Studies in cognitive learning initially tries to understand and describe cohesion-cognitive processes in meaningful verbal learning. Human brain gets the information, works on it, changes its shape and content, stores it, and retrieves when needed and produces reactions. Information which leaves sensory memory at the end of the processes of attention and perception passes to short-term memory or working memory, the second element of the system. Working memory’s duration of saving information and its capacity is limited. Short-term memory has two significant fuctions; storing the information in a short time and operating mental work. Model of information processing and point of view related to reading comprehension after the emergence of cognitive psychology has changed. There is an interaction between linguistic skills and mental processes in process of comprehension. As a result of this interaction, the meaning of the text will emerge. Individual differences and failures in process of comprehension cannot be explained only by linguistic skills; mental processes that play a significant role in this proceess also may cause these differences and failures. According to new points of view realated to reading comprehension, reading takes place in cognitive level, and it is a complex task which requires different skills and processes as well as being very different. In process of comprehension, such processes as processing and analyze of words in text, integrating the information in text with the background information which was acquired and kept in individual’s memory for a long time, and solving ambiguities. Inadequacy in capacity of working memory and deficiency in its fuction will also effect comprehension negatively. Pschologists of cognitive science state that memory is composed of three components such as sensory memory, short-term memory or working memory and long-term memory. The concept of working memory is called as a specific memory function which is related to making the data meaningful and gathering information units. Working memory that is thought to have a significant role in a lot of complex thinking structures such as reasoning, solving problems and language reading comprehension has a great importance in reading comprehension. Reading is a complex process that involves multiple mental functions which are working in concert to discern meaning from text. Reading comprehension is a difficult and complex task that requires use of working memory and is thought to take place in cognitive level. Working memory in reading process is related to recognizing and encoding of sentences or words in remembering the thing that has been read. Working memory where the information from available text and long-term memory is entegrated is a dynamic system and working field. Working memory also revises and entegrates the information that is coming from verbal short-term memory to make easy to understand the text. Temporary storing of information is the core of reading comprehension. In order to understand a text thoroughly, working memory must be in interaction with both long-term and short-term memory. It is suggested that reading comprehension takes place in working memory. Amount of working memory which is used for comprehension depends on automatical level of fundamental reading skills and functions of components of working memory such as processing and storing. Working memory has such fucntions as understanding complex structures and preserving sentence structures during reading. In order to make understandable some explicit details, and to entagrate the background knowledge from long-term memory, and to supply coherence of text, information from different sentences must be entegrated. Working memory functions as a buffer for the sentences which come from text, which provides readers to entegrate the meanings in order to enable intersentence coherence. Working memory holds information from long-term memory, and it aims to make the ıntegration easy of this information. Active working memory enables the mental suspension of information while using or manipulating it. Active working memory is necessary to understand text. Good readers can keep track of different details and make connections between them. Active working memory is the mental place where the connecting takes place. People who have difficulty in reading comprehension generally have difficulty in working memory, which affects the ability to process information and it also affects reading comprehension. This is because people relate what they are currently reading to what they just read. When working memory is not working accurately, readers cannot put the current words into context by what they just read. Instead of reading the words as part of a sentence or part of a paragraph, difficulty in reading comprehension causes the person to read the words individually, without any context. Because working memory may not work accurately, the student is unable to answer questions after just reading the information. During analyze of text, working memory is required to hold propositions and thoughts from text, to inference, to develop an understanding for construction coherence of a text, and to be aware of ambiguity. At this point of view, working memory is one of the fundemental components of process of comprehension. Comprehension depends on the capacity of the amount of working memory, which holds the information derived from the text. This information makes the understanding of this text easier. Differences in the capacity of working memory most probably influence the performance of reading comprehension and, they are the reason for individual differences in comprehension. Working memory is composed of phonogical loop, visual-spatial sketchpad and central executive. Two of these components are phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad. These components are responsible for saving the coming information in mind. While phonological loop deals with use of audial information and saving it, visuo-spatial sketchpad is responsible for keeping the visual and spatial information in mind. Central executive, the third component, is responsible for choosing store to save information and collecting this information. It is supported by these two sub-systems, and it controls the attention. It is also responsible for coordination of cognitive processes when more than one activities are done at the same time

Keywords

Reading Comprehension, Working Memory, Mental Processes, Cognitive Psycologie, Storage and Processing

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